Hey everyone,
as @Jeto mentioned in Feature Request: Improve switching between Party and Solo Battles there will be a rework of Party/Co-Op Mode at some point in the future.
As you might have noticed, I do like playing with friends in a party. This means that I’d like to see PQ3 evolve into a more party-friendly game and to suggest things to build upon.
So here are some ideas to make the game more “party friendly”:
- Redo friends towards Friends with benefits: Just look at Friends are “worthless” to see why this sucks. We do need PMs, trading between Friends (also: a kingdom trading post!), requesting help / buffs / whatever, an activity system … to be honest: just anything better than a list of names.
- Further improve the stability of party mode. First off, I am really glad that the co-op code is much more stable than it was during EA. This is great and means you can now build upon it, as the game still somethings get an out-of-sync error. Thus, having a stable network code is essential to the game.
- Adjust the XP table to match the hunts XP table within 5 level range of the highest player. This means you can now level a new character together but not power-level someone with a high-level character. Still, you can play together with a L45 and a L50 and have fun.
- Adjust all chest levels within a 5 level range of the highest player. It is really annoying that my friends’ well-equipped L46 Paladin survives L70 dungeons and hits harder than my badly equipped L50 Necromancer → Playing together within a certain level range means that you should be able to benefit from the same rewards.
- Introduce group-selected party-only rewards: As there are still no benefits from playing in a group (it takes longer, the small percentage bonus is not worth it, etc.), the group leader should be able to select a goal for the party and thus modify the reward. Additional rewards do not require a key to unlock and are granted in addition to the normal reward:
- XP boost (also applies to L50 characters!)
- Dungeon-only:
- Spell reward: 15/30/50% chance to receive an additional (random) spell from the dungeon
- Selected set item reward: 5/10/15% chance to receive an additional selected set item from the dungeon
- Relic reward : 0/10/20% chance to receive a (selected!) relic
- Skirmish-only:
- Resource reward: select type (shard, rune) and level for a 10/15/20% chance for the additional reward
- Crystals reward: select follower and add a 5/10/15% chance for the specific reward
- Shard reward: 15/30/50% chance to receive a cache of bonus shards (for example: 250 shards for a previously selected type or 50 shards for all types)
- Hunt-like battle sequence: fight x skirmish + 1 dungeon for special rewards
- Legendary item reward: 5/10/20% chance to receive a bonus legendary item from the selected final dungeon
- Mythical item reward: 0/0/10% chance to receive a bonus mythical item from the selected final dungeon
- Use gold to “buy-in” to the rewards / modify the odds: rewards are selected by the group leader, but the party members may spend gold to participate/change the odds to the party’s favor. This introduces a useful way to spend in-game gold.
- Introduce battle tactics: It is fine to start with one player per enemy, but allow switching targets, assisting a player who struggles with a certain enemy (e.g., a high-level spider in round 1 might kill one player, so this person asks for assistance), etc.
-
Persistent player buffs / enemy debuffs: if multiple players fight against a single enemy, apply the debuffs (both on the enemy as well as those coming from the enemy) to all players (or their session) fighting the enemy. This means that different heroes can and need to play out their strength instead of playing a “1:1” with shared HP. Also, this opens up for special tactics, but might need some balancing though
- Engage in a tactical timeline when fighting an enemy together: with the suggested change that a joint fight is a fight as a group, it makes sense to be able to delay an attack (or the opposite: cast a spell/etc.) before another player ends the turn in an intuitive way. Having a tactical timeline, where group members can just place an effect they can apply or request an effect they need (to survive), set out a warning (beware of the “I will kill you”-spell, which is now ready), people can easily form strategies and notify the other players of possibilities and dangers. In case of the “certain-death” spell, a player could also request someone to cast mana drain, etc.
… These are just some ideas, but in essence: group fight means to have a group fight for better rewards and/or a different challenge. Currently, party mode just puts people together without any benefit and it does not feel like a group fight at all. Maybe with these ideas, this can change - what do you think? 
[edit: added the tactical timeline to suggest an easy way to communicate in-fight, as the chat is very clumsy and there are not notifications even though there is a group chat … 
]
